Continue to decrease response times. Reduce the length of development cycles. Build a single layer of integration that unifies on-premises and cloud security.
The plan was clear: SURA Peru—part of Grupo SURA, a Latin American holding company with a strategic focus on diverse financial services—was ready to modernize its application infrastructure. A new integration appliance would address the issues quickly, but Cesar Chang, Vice President of Finance and IT (CFO/CTO) at SURA Peru, wanted to do more than speed things up and standardize security. He wanted to prepare SURA Peru for the future.
Peru, like several countries in the region, has faced technological challenges that have slowed the adoption of cloud, and Peruvian government regulations prevent companies from moving their business-critical data to cloud servers hosted in other countries. For Bernardino Bravo-Mejia, IT Corporate Manager at SURA Peru, and Carlos Candela, the company’s Chief Technology Architect, that meant a full shift to the cloud would be challenging. Regardless, the company’s vision was to be 100% cloud native.
90%
Faster application deployments
5X
Faster application response times
But that didn’t mean the team couldn’t start getting ready for that shift. In fact, preparing for the cloud could give SURA Peru a competitive advantage in the future.
That’s why the company selected IBM Cloud Pak® for Integration on Red Hat® OpenShift® as the basis for its private cloud environment as well as its modernization project. Candela explains: “With IBM Cloud Pak for Integration, we can make major improvements in our infrastructure right now, while maintaining the portability to move to the cloud when regulation is more flexible. It’s an ideal approach for us.”
IBM Business Partner Synopsis helped SURA Peru develop, test and deploy the solution, a modern microservices-based architecture that uses IBM® App Connect Enterprise technology, which is part of the IBM Cloud Pak for Integration platform. The modernization team made the strategic decision to take a containerized approach with the new architecture, thereby making it easier to develop and deploy new integrations by reusing existing components. Containerization also adds to the scalability and resiliency of the infrastructure, and it can help streamline the process of moving to the cloud in the future.
As a pension fund administrator, SURA Peru handles a lot of critical financial information, so it must build security into everything it does. In the past, the organization addressed security on a case-by-case basis, developing a separate security layer for each new application it developed. As part of the modernization project, Bravo-Mejia and the team implemented the IBM DataPower® Gateway solution, which helps protect SURA Peru’s data by standardizing security policies across applications and sending all traffic through a single point of entry. “It’s a more modern approach to security,” says Bravo-Mejia.
The solution is now in full production, and everyone is pleased with the success of the modernization project. With an integrated security layer, the team is much better able to manage security for the entire organization. Speed, too, has improved substantially. Response times have gone from over three seconds to just 600 milliseconds — an improvement that translates to better customer service, a key differentiator in Peru’s highly competitive pension fund industry.
Developing and deploying new cloud applications has also become faster and easier thanks to the new container-based integration platform. SURA Peru can now deploy a new application in less than half the time required previously. But that’s only the beginning. Candela explains: “Each new API we develop can be leveraged and redeployed for other services, which means we’ll continue to get faster and more efficient as we go along.” Together, these capabilities position SURA Peru to convert to a fully API-based company in the near future.
The IBM Cloud Pak solution has helped modernize SURA Peru’s on-premises application infrastructure, speeding up processes and enhancing security. And when regulations and capabilities allow, the solution will support SURA Peru’s move to the cloud with the flexibility, scalability and support Bravo-Mejia and his team have come to expect. “We’re looking forward to the journey,” says Bravo-Mejia, “and we’re glad to have IBM on our side.”
Based in Lima, SURA Peru (link resides outside ibm.com) is a pension fund administrator. For more than 25 years, it has helped working Peruvians develop and achieve their retirement savings goals. Its parent company, Grupo SURA, has operations throughout Latin America, serving more than 39 million clients and managing assets of more than USD 163 billion.
IBM Business Partner Synopsis (link resides outside ibm.com) provides a wide range of IT services, including service-oriented architecture (SOA) implementation, application integration, infrastructure support and consulting services. Synopsis has been an accredited IBM Training Provider since the early 2000s. From its headquarters in Lima, Peru, Synopsis operates in Latin America, North America and Europe.
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Produced in the United States of America, March 2021.
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